Charles MURATORE
I was born right here in Corona on January 5, 1912. I was born at home. People didn’t go to hospitals much in those days. My parents were Gaetano and Mary Muratore. My father was one of the first ten Italian men to migrate to Corona . At first they lived in tents. My father left Palermo, Sicily in 1902 and traveled to Riverside to work in the citrus industry. In 1907 he moved on to his final and permanent home, Corona . My father chose Corona to be my hometown.
My father was the first local Italian to receive American citizenship. It seems two of his children were stuck on Ellis Island, and he needed to become a citizen to get them released. You see, years before I was born, he had sent for my mother and the other children to come over from Italy . The officials at Ellis Island let my mother through, but they kept my brother, Mimi, and my sister, Carmel , for some reason, and they were going to send them back to Italy . My father sent the government $50 a month to keep the youngsters from being sent back. That was a lot of money in those days, and I don’t know how he managed it. After two and one half years of this he went to the Courthouse at Riverside and became a naturalized American citizen. Since he was then a citizen, Mimi and Carmel automatically became citizens, so the officials at Ellis Island released them, and they joined the family in Corona .
My father was a small man with a big, flowing mustache. He didn’t smoke or play cards, but he did drink a little wine and take snuff now and then. He was a hard worker. After putting in a full day at the Jameson Company packing house, he would work in his vegetable garden every evening until dark. He worked for the Jameson Company for over 50 years and didn’t retire until he was 81.
Altogether my parents had nine children. One of my sisters died as a baby, but the others all grew up and became part of the Corona citrus industry. Every one in the family worked. My mother was the real boss in the family. All of us kids and my father turned every paycheck over to her, and she paid all the bills. Of course, years later when we got married, we moved into homes with all the furnishing complete and paid for by our parents.
Corona ’s Italian community was very much a part of the local citrus industry. I have no idea how many combined years my family spent working for the Jameson Company alone. My wife, Norma, worked there for years. Mimi and my father together spent over 100 years there. The Jameson Company gave my father a watch for more than 50 years on the job. He was very proud of that watch. I put in 17 years there myself before opening the Corona Bakery.
We all worked in the citrus packing houses. As kids, it didn’t seem like work at all We would walk the tree or four blocks to the fruit packing plant, work all day, then walk home together. The citrus industry wasn’t just a place we worked; it was a part of our community life together. We were born into it, grew up in it, and met our wives there; it was who we were. There was always something doing, dinners, parties and good times.
I met my wife, Norma, while we were both working in the Jameson Company packing house. Norma’s father, Pete Lencioni, was a tree doctor for the Hamptons at the Corona Foothill Lemon Company. Norma still lives in our house on West Eleventh Street ; she has been there over sixty years now.
Norma and I married in 1937. Three years after we married, Norma and I opened the Corona Bakery on Main Street . We ran it until 1965. It kept me very busy; I spent 25 years baking bread on Main Street, Corona. In 1946, our first daughter was born. We named her Charlana Lou. When she was ten years old, our second daughter, Sharlie Marie, was born. Both of our daughters grew up in Corona , and they graduated from CoronaHigh School . Charlana married Ronald Watling; Sharlie married Tom Lipari, who was the son of another local Italian family.
In 1966 I left the bakery and bought a liquor store in Ontario . I worked there until retirement in 1979. I was too busy working to have hobbies; people used to work harder than they do nowadays, I guess, but I was a member of the Temescal Masonic Lodge and St. Edward’s Catholic Church.
During the first half of the 20th Century, Corona was a hub of the California citrus industry. I am proud to have been a part of all that. In some ways Corona has changed a lot since those early glory days, but the Italians are still here, and my family is still here, and I am very proud of that.